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Thursday, July 3, 2014

Give me the boy at 7 and I will give you the man


    This past week there was release of the latest in a series of videos following a group of 14 English children from the age of seven to their current age of fifty-six.  What started out in 1964 as a movie of how the British social structure determined opportunities for their adult lives.  Their is an old saying "show me the child at seven and I will show you the adult."  This saying is one way of looking at how our environment determines how we develop as adults.  56 Up shows how these life opportunities have played out as they enter late middle age.  Netflix has the whole series of films that have been done every seven years since the original 1964 film.  I have watched each of these films and have found it fascinating as a longitudinal study of the social impact our birth situations on what type of people we become.  It is interesting how many of the adults have been divorced at least once.  I am not sure if divorce is more common in England than the US but it doesn't seem to reflect the social class of the participants.
      To watch a preview of the latest film here is a link.


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